Picturesque Plum

Rare is the U. S. citizen over 35 who would turn down the chance to spend four years in the "Paradise of the Pacific" as

Governor of Hawaii. Rare, too. is the U. S. citizen who can get that chance under existing law which requires the territorial Governor to be an actual resident of the islands. Last week President Roosevelt asked Congress to change the law and make this picturesque plum available to nonresidents. Said he in a special message: "In making my choice I should like to be free to pick from the islands themselves or from the entire United States the best man for this post."

A number of reasons could have entered the President's decision to call for a suspension in Hawaii's home-rule law. The threat of a mainland Governor might be enough to keep the island Democratic machine under control. In 1931-32 the Massie rape & murder case gave the insular government a black eye, revealed an unwholesome connection between local politics, local justice and local race feeling. Aware of the strategic importance of the islands, high Army & Navy officers have long demanded civilian rule stronger and better than resident Governors have been able to supply. Of late Big Business on the islands has thought about an outsider as Governor.

Perhaps the President had in mind some particularly deserving mainland Democrat whom he wished to put into a particularly soft berth. But the only Democrat thus mentioned last week was Benjamin Barr Lindsey, disbarred juvenile court judge of Denver and few party leaders thought he rated the appointment.

Islanders who continued to hope they would be appointed Governor of Hawaii despite a change in the law included Rufus Hagood, Honolulu physician; William B. Pittman, Honolulu lawyer, brother of Nevada's Key Pittman who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Delbert E. Metger, chairman of last year's territorial Democratic convention, and John H. Wilson, Scotch-Irish-Tahitian-Hawaiian who, at the age of 12, used to polish guns in the royal Hawaiian armory.

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